Justine Davis - Always a Hero

He kept reading, and reached the final post.

I hate him. I wish he was dead and my mom was still alive.

The last entry sat there, unchanging, undeniable. He blinked. Closed the browser. Shut down the computer. Got up from the desk. Walked up the stairs. Opened the first door on the right.

Jordan lay curled up on his side, like his mother had said he used to sleep when he’d been much, much smaller. The room was a mess, clothes strewn about, belongings scattered. But he was there, and for the moment, safe. Wyatt went on down the hall to his own room.

Mechanically he went through the rituals of getting ready for sleep, as if that would help it come, or that it would be restful when it did. He knew what would happen. He would lie down, resisting the urge to draw up in a fetal curl himself. And then it would begin, the nightly parade of images and memories. And if he was really exhausted, the idea would occur to him that all the people around the world who had damned him were getting their wish.

He turned out the bedside light. His head hit the pillow.

He closed his eyes, wondering if this would be one of the nights he regretted going to sleep. In the silence of the house, broken only by the occasional creak or snap as it contracted in the rapidly chilling night air, the latest in the long string of confrontations played back in his head. He thought of all the things he’d done, all the places he’d been, all the situations he’d faced, all the times when he’d been written off as dead or likely to be.

He’d survived them all.

But he wasn’t at all sure he was going to survive a thirteen-year-old boy.

I hate him. I wish he was dead and my mom was still alive.

“So do I,” he whispered into the darkness.

Kai Reynolds heard the guitar riff signal from the front door of Play On as she got to the last line of the vendor form. She’d rigged the system to rotate through a series of recorded bits daily. This week it was the classics. Yesterday had been a few seconds of Stevie Ray, today was The Edge on her fave, that sweet Fender Strat, tomorrow would be the simplest and oldest, that classic single chord from George Harrison’s Rickenbacker 12-string that opened “A Hard Day’s Night.”

Next week it would be some Wylde, Rivers Cuomo and Mustaine balanced by a variety pack of Atkins and Robert Johnson leavened with a bit of Urban.

She took three seconds to finish checking the order against her inventory of guitar strings, then looked up. She quickly spotted who had come in, one who didn’t often have to ask because he usually knew, even from the three- to five-second clips, who was playing. For a kid his age, Jordan Price had a good ear.

An idea struck her, that she should add in some people he might not know. Ry Cooder, maybe, or Derek Trucks. And to bolster the feminine side, some of Raitt’s sweet slide and Batten’s two-handed tapping.

“Hey, Kai,” Jordan said, his face lighting up when he saw her behind the counter.

“Jordy,” she acknowledged with a return smile. The boy had told her some time ago, rather shyly, that he allowed no one else to use that nickname. She knew he had a bit of a crush on her, so she’d gently told him that someday he’d meet another girl he didn’t mind it from, and then he’d know she was the one.

“The Edge, right? The Stratocaster?”

“Right in one,” she said, her smile becoming a grin.

“You oughta put you in there.”

Her smile became a grin at the words he said at least two or three days a week when he came in after school. “Nah. I’m not in their league.”

“But that riff you did on Crash, that was killer.”

“I borrowed it from Knopfler.”

“But yours sounded completely different.”

“That was the Gibson, not me,” she said, as if they hadn’t had this conversation before. “What did you do, run all the way?”

The boy walked from the middle school that was about a mile away. Then, when he was done, he walked back to school, usually in haste, before his father got there to pick him up. She thought it odd, since she was closer to where the boy lived than the school was, but Jordy said his father insisted because he didn’t trust him.

“Should he?” she’d asked.

“Sure,” Jordy had answered, his expression grim. “Where am I gonna go in this town?”

There had been a wealth of disdain in his voice, but Kai had let it pass.

“Nah, it’s just hot out today,” he said now.

“Enjoy it. Fall’s hovering.” The boy made a face. “Maybe we’ll get snow this winter.”

His expression changed slightly, looking the tiniest bit intrigued, as she’d guessed a kid who’d grown up in Southern California might at the idea.

“That would be cool,” he said, then smiled at his own unintentional pun.

“So how’s life today?”

“Sucks,” Jordy said, his smile fading.

“Still not getting along with your dad, huh?”

“He’s an as—” Jordy broke off what had obviously been going to be a crude bodily assessment.

“Good save,” Kai said, acknowledging the effort. “Your mom probably didn’t like you swearing.”

“Only reason I stopped,” Jordy muttered, looking away. Kai guessed he was tearing up and didn’t want her to see.

“If we can’t cry for the ones we’ve loved and lost, then what good are we?” she asked softly.

He looked up at her then, and she indeed saw the gleam of moisture in his eyes. Those green eyes, she thought, were going to knock that girl he’d meet someday right on her backside.

“You understand, because you lost someone, too.”

The boy not only had a good ear, he was perceptive.

“Yes.”

“Kit.”

She didn’t talk about him, ever. But this was a kid in pain, worse today than she’d ever seen it, and she sensed he needed to know he wasn’t alone. And she suspected he already knew how Christopher Hudson had died; the info was out there, on the Net, and easy enough to find.

“Yes. And I loved him very much,” she finally said. “But it wasn’t like your mother, who didn’t want to leave you. He did it to himself.”

Jordy’s eyes widened. “He killed himself?”

No outside source would have said that, she knew. They all said it was accidental. She didn’t look at it that way. But then, she’d been in the middle of it.

“Slowly. Years of drugs.”

“Oh.” Jordy was silent for a moment before he said, in a small voice, “How long ago?”

She hesitated again. Was he wondering how long it took to feel life was worth living again?

“A long time ago.” Six years ago was almost half his lifetime, so she figured that was accurate. “And,” she added quietly, “yesterday.”

She saw his brows furrow, then clear as he nodded slowly in understanding.

“So you haven’t … forgotten?”

Panic edged his voice. Ah, she thought. So that was it. “No. And I never will. And you won’t either, Jordy. I promise you.”

“But … sometimes I can’t remember what she sounded like.”

Interesting, she thought, that it was sound and not image that he was worried about.

“But do you remember how you felt when she talked to you, told you how much she loved you?”

The boy colored slightly, but nodded again.

“Then you remember the important part. And you always will.”

It was a few minutes before the boy got around to asking if he could have the sound room and the slightly battered but well-loved Strat she often let people use. Jordan was just starting out, and it was a bit too much for his hands. She had a small acoustic in back she thought he’d do better with, but he thought acoustics were boring and wasn’t interested. Yet.

Now there was something to add to the door rotation, she thought. Some of her personal favorite acoustic bits, six- and twelve-string, Steve Davison and Jaquie Gipson first on the list, Kaki too, and John Butler and his custom eleven strings. Nobody could listen to them and still think acoustics were boring.